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🤝 Collaboration Is the Only Way Forward

Global data center demand is set to more than double by 2030, reaching a staggering 220 GW of IT compute driven by the explosive rise of GenAI and enterprise AI. It’s a high-velocity ecosystem change that will touch every stakeholder, from hyperscalers and colos to component manufacturers, network builders, financiers, and AI platform innovators.

Five Trends Shaping the Data Center Landscape

1. Resource Bottlenecks Are the New Normal
   Power, skilled labor, and critical equipment supply are now gating the scale and speed of new builds. Nearly every project faces delays as power grid approvals, utility upgrades, and long equipment lead times (generators, chillers, transformers) stretch out deployment timelines. For many, the time-to-power is now the single biggest obstacle to growth, with backlog for grid connection approvals often reaching two years or more. Traditional supply chains and fragmented procurement no longer cut it.

2. The Rise of New Data Center Hubs
   Power and land constraints in Tier-1 markets are driving investment toward new regional hubs like Canada, UAE, Malaysia, Nordics, India, and Spain. These new mega-campuses and national sovereign initiatives are enabled by regional policies, low energy costs, and regulatory innovation. The U.S. alone could see a 25 GW supply gap by 2030, prompting hyperscalers and colos to invest in alternative geographies and develop sovereign AI infrastructure.

3. The Compute Layer Is Evolving Fast
   Innovations in multimodal models, chain-of-thought reasoning, domain-specific LLMs, and hardware optimization are pushing rack power densities to new extremes. Liquid cooling and direct-to-chip solutions are rapidly gaining traction as air-cooling hits its limits. Meanwhile, custom silicon and high-bandwidth optics are becoming the new competitive battleground, further accelerating obsolescence risk for yesterday’s architectures.

4. Enterprise AI and GenAI: Still Early Days
   Despite all the media hype, most enterprise GenAI deployments remain stuck at the pilot phase. Only a tiny fraction (<25%) of enterprises have scaled GenAI across functions, and fewer than 15% report meaningful revenue impact. Talent shortages, compliance concerns, cloud-vs-on-prem debates, and organizational resistance remain real bottlenecks. Yet the opportunity both for value and infrastructure expansion is massive.

5. Private Capital and New Business Models Fuel Expansion
   A record wave of private capital is flooding into data center infrastructure, with landmark deals like the Stargate Project ($500B), $30B in equity partnerships, and $80B+ from the largest infrastructure funds since 2024. Investors are pushing into every layer of the value chain, including picks-and-shovel suppliers, services, substation buildout, and the GPU-as-a-service ecosystem. Business model innovation is accelerating from grid-scale energy projects to AI-optimized maintenance and custom fiber rollouts.

The Urgency for Industry-Wide Collaboration

As the sector races ahead, the sheer scale of the infrastructure challenge is now beyond any single player. It will require orchestrated collaboration across hardware innovators, hyperscalers, utilities, regulators, builders, and service providers to:

• Accelerate power grid modernization and renewable integration

• Develop standardized, modular deployment strategies

• Tackle supply chain and labor constraints with collective solutions

• Advance interoperability around AI platform deployment

• Ensure responsible AI infrastructure is developed for scale, security, and sustainability

AI INFRA SUMMIT: Where the Builders Unite

That’s why our AI INFRA SUMMIT on November 7, 2025, in San Francisco is more than an event it’s the platform where the future of digital infrastructure is shaped. We’re convening the visionaries, operators, and doers: from hyperscalers to disruptive startups, energy giants to AI-first leaders. Together, we’ll problem-solve, benchmark, and set the priorities for next-generation AI infrastructure.

In times of unprecedented demand, collaboration isn’t optional. It’s the new baseline for progress. If you’re building or enabling the AI future, this is your room. Let’s raise the standard, share the load, and scale what’s possible. See you on

Upcoming Events

Bay Area Startups Collectively Secured $34B in September

Bay Area startups closed on $34B in fundings in the month of September, driven by Anthropic's and xAI's multi-billion dollar raises and a plethora of megadeals. That takes the YTD total to $156B, well past 2021's previous high of $123B, with Q4 still ahead of us.

The Venture Market Report for Q2 & H1 2025 is now available for online browsing or download. It focuses on startups in Silicon Valley and Northern California and provides an in-depth look at the state of our startup ecosystem. The data for the Venture Market Report comes directly from the Pulse of the Valley weekday newsletter and summarizes fundings by sector and series, acquisitions and IPOs (with details) plus new funds raised by investors and new VC firms launched. Check it out and sign up for a 1 week free trial of the Pulse if you'd like to get the data when it first comes out.

For startups raising capital: The Pulse of the Valley weekday newsletter keeps you current with the startups that are getting funded and who's investing in them – and not just the big, high profile deals. We surface the 50% of early stage fundings – and their investors - that close quietly and never hit the press. Details include investor and executive connections and contact information on 25+ years of fundings and business activity. Founders get the full $50/month package for just $7/month with LinkSV's Entrepreneur membership, details and signup here.

Follow us on LinkedIn to stay on top of what's happening in 2025 in startup fundings, M&A and IPOs, VC fundraising plus new executive hires & investor moves.

Early Stage:

• Periodic Labs closed a $300M Seed, building AI scientists and the autonomous laboratories for them to control.

• Axiom Math closed a $64M Seed, building quantitative super-intelligence and focused on mathematical discovery, unlocking everything: from the human brain to the cosmos.

• Moonlake AI closed a $28M Seed, builds AI that generates interactive simulations and games.

• Alex closed a $17M Series A, an AI recruiting partner that automates recruiter busywork, including phone screens, video interviews, fraud detection, and notetaking.

• Longeye closed a $5M Seed, an AI-powered investigative workspace that extracts key intelligence from overwhelming volumes of digital evidence and links every finding back to its original source.

Growth Stage:

• Cerebras Systems closed a $1.1B Series G, building a new class of AI supercomputer powered by the largest commercially available AI processor and easily clustered together to make massive AI supercomputers.

• Vercel closed a $300M Series F, our AI Cloud provides the tools and infrastructure to build, scale, and secure intelligent applications

• CyberCube Analytics closed a $180M Series C, the leading provider of software-as-a-service cyber risk analytics to quantify cyber risk in financial terms.

• Supabase closed a $100M Series E, the Postgres development platform that is the preferred backend for AI-driven development.

• Midi Health closed a $50M Series C, the healthcare women in midlife deserve—rooted in science, guided by experts, and covered by insurance - modern healthcare for your second act.

Powering AI Through Energy Innovation

Crusoe is redefining AI infrastructure by putting energy first. They operate a vertically integrated model—capturing and harnessing stranded and renewable energy, building modular AI data centers, and offering a scalable AI cloud platform.

What They Deliver

• Energy-First Deployment
  Crusoe sources power directly often below market rates by leveraging stranded natural gas, renewables, and microgrids, turning energy waste into compute capacity.

• AI-Optimized Infrastructure
  Their data centers are built for demanding AI workloads high-density GPU deployment, liquid cooling, low latency networking, and self-healing architectures.

• Sustainable Scalability
  With over 20 GW of energy projects in development and modular data center deployment, Crusoe aims to meet high compute demand while maintaining environmental integrity.

Why It Matters

• They turn a major issue in AI scaling energy into a competitive advantage.

• By aligning energy sourcing, compute deployment, and AI services, Crusoe offers a framework that’s both cost-effective and cleaner.

• Their approach helps unlock infrastructure in locations traditionally unsuitable for data centers due to grid constraints.

Want to dig deeper? Learn how Crusoe is accelerating AI deployment with energy-driven infrastructure: https://www.crusoe.ai/ 

Your Feedback Matters!

Your feedback is crucial in helping us refine our content and maintain the newsletter's value for you and your fellow readers. We welcome your suggestions on how we can improve our offering. [email protected] 

Logan Lemery
Head of Content // Team Ignite

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